BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. We're live at Winter NAMM 2008 in Anaheim. I'm Bill Holland and I'm here at the Epiphone booth, and what do you have for us here?

WILL JONES: Hi. I'm Will, Dr. Epiphone. Welcome to the 2008 Winter NAMM in the Epiphone display. The big thing here at Epiphone this year for 2008 is the Prophecy collection. I've been telling people about it for a while and now it's finally here. It's a collection of guitars that are high performance and ready to shred, kill, and destroy. Let's start out with the king of solid-body electric guitars, the Les Paul.

Here we have the Les Paul Prophecy Customs in two different configurations. Here we have one with active 81 and 85 EMGs. Now, what all these Prophecy Collection Guitars, these particular ones, share are 24 frets, slim taper, satin finish, super fast necks plus big ginormous fretwire, so a lot of great little tap and speed going on there plus these monstrous 81 and 85 active pickups with Mr. Battery Compartment make these things absolutely ready to rock, and look at the really cool blade custom inlay that we came up with just for these guitars. And so in black, it's got the EMGs. In Black Cherry, we have Dirty Fingers. Yes, that's right, Gibson USA Dirty Finger Pickups with coil tapping. Drop them out to the single so you can really shred and of course you can see it's gorgeous, again satin finish, slim taper, super fast lightning neck with 24 frets and the big ginormous fretwires.

Same rules apply to the SG Custom of the Prophecy, active 8185's, and over here we have the Dirty Fingers with a little bit of push-pull action for the coil tap. These are absolutely -- look at how gorgeous these things are. They're really nice, quality maple tops, and their pearly little knob things going on there. They look great but they're very dangerous. They must be handled properly or you could hurt yourself.

also we have some other goodies. We have a couple of Futura models. This is just sort of a sample. We'll have a black one with a Floyd Rose, and then we'll have one in the Black Cherry like that Paul that -- the other I just showed you with the hard tailpiece, the stopbar tailpiece. They all have the quiltinzed maple top and both of the Futuras will have 8185 active EMGs.

There's also -- but wait there's more. You'll also get the EM2. It's a bolt neck so it makes it very affordable. This is the string through model in blue. There's also a black that will have a Floyd, and these have something that are ours exclusively. These are the new Epi active pickups. They're active electronic pickups, and they have a neat little thing that a lot of other stuff like the EMG's don't on these. They have -- no that's not single-coil tapping. This is actually an active-passive downshift so that if your battery rolls on you, you can still keep rocking without the battery and roll passive. If you want the passive sound, that's sort of a cool thing.

Also here we have -- This is a really cool thing. This is the Slash Signatre Les Paul. Everybody's want to see the Slash, and look. He dropped by yesterday and did a little scribbling on that. Isn't that cool? This is coming home with me. Mm yeah! It has, of course, Slash's famous Vintage Sunburst finish on it that he likes, nickel hardware, his exact neck profile; we got it absolutely correct. Also, you can't see it but it's under the pickup, the super-long neck tenon that Slash likes and the pickups are USA Seymour Duncans, and this guy here will start appearing in stores near you I think in March, and a lot of people are looking forward to the Slash Les Paul.

Also over here in the Prophecy, there's a couple of others to show you. For you Blinker fans out there, we have the Tom DeLonge 333. It's got one Dirty Finger and a volume because you either rock it or you're not. Right? That's right. Really cool nice paint job on it here with the racing stripe.

And last but not least, you saw it last night onstage with Heart at our Epiphone party, this is the Ultra 2. It's like the Ultra 1 from the last couple of years. It's a chambered Les Paul so it's really nice and light, and it won't like break your back and stuff, and it's got the carved scarfing here for nice contour and comfort, and it's also got a nice, sweeter, lighter tone to it because it's semi-hollow. Now, what's really cool about the Ultra 2, of course like the Ultra 1, with the humbucker pickups, it's still a real Les Paul with the Les Paul tone and sustain that only a Les Paul, the king of solid bodies can give you, but what the Ultra 2 has that's really cool is we've added the Shadow NanoMAG pickup, like in our eSonic 2 preamps for electric-acoustics, and you put that on there. You turn it on here in the back, here's the controls, turn that on, and turn the humbuckers down, and this thing actually sounds just like an acoustic guitar. Not like a semihollow, not like a solid-body acoustic, it actually sounds like an acoustic guitar. It's amazing. The first time I heard it, it fooled me. It blew my mind. So, this is the new Ultra 2. Here in the States, it's going to list for around eleven and a half or so and it's going to be of course a lot less, it's your favorite neighborhood Epiphone dealer, and it's like two guitars in one. It's one of the most awesome innovations that we've come up with in years, and I'm really excited about it and I can't wait to get two or three for myself.

Anyway, those are the main things going on here. It's all about the Prophecy collection here this year, and of course we've got all the other models that you know and love. We've got the archtops and the Masterbuilt, all solid-wood acoustics with dovetail neck joints and hot, hot glue. That's a real acoustic by the way, all solid woods. Did I mention that bone nut and saddles?

BILL HOLLAND: [SOUNDS LIKE] Oh. I don't think so.

WILL JONES: Oh yeah, but it's good stuff. And of course, we've got all the real Les Pauls and the SG's and the archtops and things, and the Epiphone amplifiers like the Blues Custom 30 with the all-tube tube rectifier. Those are some of the best goodies here at the Epiphone. [WILL JONES DOING A PORKY PIG IMPRESSION] It's the last day of the show.

BILL HOLLAND: Yeah. It's [INAUDIBLE]

WILL JONES: Anyway -- I know it's like, "Hi. Who am I?" Anyway, thank you guys for coming by to see the new stuff. We appreciate it very much, and you're William?

BILL HOLLAND: I'm Bill.

WILL JONES: You're Bill. You go by Bill?

BILL HOLLAND: I go by Bill.

WILL JONES: Well, I go by Will!

BILL HOLLAND: All right.

WILL JONES: We got to get that straight.

BILL HOLLAND: Well, that should help.

WILL JONES: Anyway, thanks for coming to NAMM and seeing the new Epiphone stuff. See it in a store near you. All right, man.

BILL HOLLAND: Thanks a lot Will, and we'll be back with more from Anaheim at the 2008 Winter NAMM convention on Gearwire.Com. I'm tired. Let's go home.

GRETCHEN HASSE: [LAUGHING]